


Consuming Direct Control, Redux

by Hyliian



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy, Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Alex Mercer, BAMF Shepard (Mass Effect), Blacklight in Space, Creepy Alex is Creepy, Crossover, Eldritch Behavior, It's Deliberate, Mass Effect 2, Rewrite, Slice of Life, Viral Superweapons are Surprisingly Bad At Feigning Harmlessness, What Have I Done, Who knew?, various povs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-07-06 05:01:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15879081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyliian/pseuds/Hyliian
Summary: The Collectors had made a mistake.They had made themselvesinteresting. They werenew. They were something he had never heard of.So of course when Commander Shepard hires him on to help stop them, he had to tag along. Life gets boring after a few hundred years at the top of the food chain.Alex Mercer could do with a little excitement.





	1. Chapter 1

It had been a very, very long time since Alex Mercer had last felt any sort of actual challenge. As he sidestepped a shot from some no-name Blue Suns goon, he couldn’t help but reminisce wistfully on those first few panicked days of his existence. Marines around every corner, Blackwatch constantly coming up with new and improved ways to kill him, the satisfaction of uncovering the mysteries of his resurrection… 

In contrast, these mercenaries were fucking pathetic. 

He swept out a strike to his left, hand shifting as it moved into a massive set of razor claws, tendrils skittering over his skin and wrapping cables around his bicep and shoulders to reinforce himself. The unfortunate goon nearest to him didn’t even have time to properly appreciate how utterly fucked he was before he was severed into several large chunks. The other three idiots—predictably—panicked. 

On any other day Alex wouldn’t have minded playing around with them a little. Maybe he’d let them hit him a few times, pretend to take some damage, and give them a false sense of hope. Playing with his food was one of his only real joys in life anymore, and it was rare that his meals actually came to _him_ and did him the favor of ‘cornering’ him in some secluded, god-forsaken alleyway devoid of cameras or nosy civilians. 

But right now Alex was just _tired_. Tired of the constant fighting, of the running, of being hunted by insects that thought they were wolves. If these morons had walked up to him and politely introduced themselves, he might have been willing to just scare them off without resorting to slaughtering them. Hell, he might have even heard them out. Unfortunately, if there was one thing humanity had held onto over the centuries that it really could have done without, it was the tendency to shoot first and ask questions never.           

He patiently waited for the panicked mercenaries to run out of ammo, and snapped out a limb tipped in claws and spines like a whip in the split second they needed to reload. Three bodies fell to the ground in six distinct pieces with wet thumps. Alex let his body reform into its default state in a skittering of motion, striding forward through the carnage and letting feeder tendrils wrap around the myriad pieces of gore scattered across the filthy alleyway. No reason to leave perfectly good meat just lying around.           

Alex sighed. Now he was going to have to relocate. _Again_. The Blue Suns were, admittedly, _very_ low on his current List of Concerns, but if _they_ had been able to find him (and he’d thought he’d done a good job hiding his trail, too) that meant someone a little more dangerous wouldn’t be far behind. 

He’d put his credits on Cerberus, honestly. They’d been probing at him with the military equivalent of a very long stick for years now, trying to see what he’d do and how he’d react. Alex didn’t get the sense they were actually _hostile_ , per se, but they were one of his larger irritants and so he tended to respond to any hint of their presence with extreme hostility. Whether they were after his strength or his incredible hoard of insider secrets, Cerberus had firmly cemented itself as someone he wouldn’t piss on if they were actively on fire.

Not that he could, you know, actually piss. 

Alex shook his head and angled towards the town square, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He hadn’t been made for this sort of stagnation. He’d been built to fight, to hunt, to kill, to wage _war_. He’d been meant to rip apart armies, break the back of enemy resistance, outlast _sieges_. He’d been created to _do_. These past two hundred years of playing the galaxy’s most irritating game of cat and mouse with everyone and their fucking _dog_ was borderline torture in comparison. 

Life was, frankly, _boring_ now. There wasn’t much short of an actual starship firing on him, _from space_ , that gave him any sort of actual thrill in combat anymore, and he’d already been to most of the planets and cities worth visiting. Hell, he’d spent the better part of a decade on Omega playing the part of a gun for hire, and even _that_ had gotten stale real fast. 

It wasn’t like his situation was unique. There were asari who’d lived for a thousand years, and krogan battlemasters who’d lived even longer. None of _them_ seemed to exist in a perpetual state of drudgery. The ones he’d gotten to talk to him (usually by wearing the face of someone vastly less threatening) didn’t have any answers to his problem. The asari just concerned themselves with amassing knowledge and wealth for future generations, and the krogan were too busy trying not to die out thanks to the genophage to really be concerned about something as relatively inconsequential as _longevity_. 

Alex already had enough knowledge via the myriads of races and species he’d consumed to rival the oldest asari matriarch, and did not in any way whatsoever plan on having any ‘future generations’ to pass any of it down to. He was actually pretty sure that wasn’t physically possible for him anymore, considering he was not even remotely human. His humanoid anatomy was pretty much just another set of clothes, and it was equally as functional. 

The one time he’d let an asari try to mate with him—he’d been fascinated with the way they didn’t actually need to have sex in order to reproduce—out of sheer morbid curiosity, she’d wound up contracting Blacklight and dying an excruciating death over the course of about six seconds.

Needless to say, he hadn’t tried again. 

Alex eyeballed the spaceport as he passed it, considering the passenger freighter that had just docked. Maybe it was time to head back to the Citadel. He hadn’t been in a few years, and it was always a good place to meet interesting people. 

Interesting people tended to have the most fascinating memories. 

With a smile hidden in the shadows of his hood, Alex easily shifted into a less conspicuous body and changed course.

 

* * *

 

**_Dossier: ZEUS_ **

_Codename ZEUS; Name Unknown_

_-Possible shapeshifter_

_Data pertaining to ZEUS is sporadic at best. At its heart is a cluster of ancient encrypted files dating back to the early 21 st century, surrounded by rumors and one of the best military cover-ups in human history. ZEUS is nearly impossible to track, keeping its movements erratic and utterly unpredictable, and seems able to bypass any security system or checkpoint created to date. It was last seen on Callioux, although evidence suggests it may have relocated to the Citadel. Approach with extreme caution._

Commander Shepard frowned at her personal terminal, drumming her fingers as she furrowed her brow. This was not the sort of thing the Illusive Man liked to forward to her. Normally his dossiers were pretty solid, and contained more information than just a pseudonym and a potential location. This, in comparison, was more barren than Tuchanka. 

She also found it very interesting that the Illusive Man consistently referred to ZEUS as an _it_ rather than a he or she. Somehow she doubted it was out of any sort of courtesy towards the individual in question. Perhaps it had something to do with the way he’d labeled ZEUS a ‘possible shapeshifter’? Whatever _that_ was supposed to mean.

Her frown deepened as she reread the very short email Cerberus had seen fit to send her. The 21st century? Had the Illusive Man been prone to fits of humor, she might have thought that was a joke. Unfortunately, she’d learned (to her detriment) that the head of Cerberus had about as much of a funny bone as a hanar. Maybe ZEUS was an alien? The way the dossier had been phrased hinted at them having been present on Earth at least a century before First Contact had been made, but just because history hadn’t recorded any evidence of alien interaction prior to the discovery of the Prothean Ruins on Mars didn’t mean there hadn’t _been_ _any_.          

“Joker,” she called, decision made. “Set a course for the Citadel. We’ve got another recruit to pick up.” 

_“Aye, Commander.”_

Shepard dithered at the terminal for another, long moment. A military cover-up might have been something Cerberus wasn’t able to dig their hooks into, but there weren’t a lot of files left on the holonet that a Council Spectre (even one declared killed in action) couldn’t access. She turned and headed for the elevator that would take her up to her cabin. She had some research to do.

 

* * *

 

Alex took another pretend sip of whatever swill the bartender had given him, letting his eyes rove lazily around the room as he hunted for targets. If someone ever asked him how he picked out his prey from a crowd, he wouldn’t be able to explain it any sort of way they could understand. It was kind of like a scent, but also like a taste he could feel in the back of his throat. A vibrating sort of thrum that tasted like what his memories told him was melted chocolate, and smelled like the air before a storm. 

The stronger the thrum, the richer the taste, the more delicious the prey would be. He’d had decades to refine his methods now that he had the luxury to be choosey, and had picking potential meals down to an art form. 

No one in the bar was smelling very appealing at the moment, which suited him fine. It wasn’t like he was pressed for biomass these days, what with the absolutely appalling amount of things capable of damaging him. 

“Bored, sweetheart?” the turian who’d lounged beside him at the bar half an hour ago purred throatily. Alex aimed a brief smile the turian’s way, letting his painted lips pull up to display perfect white teeth as he brushed some blond curls off his shoulder. 

“Just waiting,” he replied easily, shifting his weight and pulling a demure cast over his features like a coat. It was easier to lure targets if he acted shy—but not coy—and tentatively receptive to advances. 

No one would question a man disappearing with a beautiful woman for a few hours. And if they never saw the man again, well, obviously he’d gotten what he wanted and moved on. 

Alex saw gender as more of an inconvenience than anything. He thought nothing of pulling on the body of a woman once in a while if it made the hunt a little more interesting—the bodies he wore were all just meat suits he used to camouflage himself, and even if he had a preference towards his default body that didn’t mean he was particularly attached to it. 

He identified as male, for all the good that did him, but it was all the same in the end. 

A tickle of petrichor drifted towards him from the door at his back, and on his tongue he could taste chocolate so rich he began salivating. With an easy flip of his hair, he peered over his shoulder and let luminescent orange eyes scan the newcomer head to toe before they flickered blue again. 

The woman was average height, red hair cut brutally short in a military bob that fit well with the heavy-duty armor she was wearing. Curiously, she bore a handful of faintly glowing red scars that no one else seemed to either notice or pay much mind to. At her left was a turian with a scarred face, and lurking at her right was a krogan that smelled artificial. Her eyes were casing the room, looking for someone in particular, but it was her body language that really drew his eye. 

Confidence. This woman wore confidence the same way he wore violence, wore hunger, wore _death_. This was a woman who’d seen things humans were not meant to see, done things people would think was impossible and come out the other side stronger for it. She would be a fighter, Alex thought. With guns, with knives, with fists, with _teeth_. She’d fight until the bitter end, struggle down his gullet until the abyss swallowed her. 

A smile pulled at him and he drew his tongue across his bottom lip to wet it. 

Someone _interesting_ had just arrived.

 

* * *

 

Shepard was frustrated. She’d been searching the Citadel up and down for anyone who might be ZEUS, but even she could admit this was a fool’s errand. Her research hadn’t turned up much more than Cerberus’s little file—to her aggravation—but she was, at this point, convinced that at least the shapeshifting part had been accurate. 

It would have been impossible for one person to hide this effectively from her otherwise. 

The bar was more of a last-ditch effort before she gave in, really. No one really stood out during her perfunctory scan of the place, although she counted three shady deals going on in the back corner and there was a cocky young turian at the bar who seemed to be striking out with a bombshell of a human. Two krogan to her right were sniping insults at each other (had they been humans, she might have called it flirting), and there was a twitchy salarian with bloodshot eyes directly to her left. 

Shepard paused, and turned back to the woman at the bar. 

Coy blue eyes stared right back at her across the room, looking up from under eyelashes so long they were almost unreal. Shepard withheld a frown. There wasn’t anything inherently _suspicious_ about the woman, but something about her had raised her hackles regardless. Maybe it was the symmetrical arrangement of features, the way even the smattering of freckles looked like a mirror image of itself on her face. Maybe it was the body language, reading as pure _come hither_ even though there was a deeper hunger in her eyes that Shepard didn’t think was actually sexual. 

Or maybe it was the way her eyes had flashed orange for a heartbeat before becoming blue again. 

_Got you_. 

Shepard angled towards the woman at the bar, trying to keep her stride casual so no one in the room got any twitchy fingers about the armored person with the gun coming towards them. 

“It looks like my date’s arrived,” the woman murmured to the turian next to her, shoulders falling open and body curled receptively towards him. Her voice was throaty, like an asari dancer. “I’ll catch you later?” 

The turian’s mandibles shifted in a smile. “Sure thing, gorgeous. Look me up next time you’re on Palavan.” 

Shepard watched as the turian ambled away with a swagger and turned back to the blond in time to see her pat the vacated seat invitingly. Her lips—painted a bright cherry red—curled up at the corners into a smile that was not reflected in her eyes. 

Shepard sat, torso angled towards the door and one hand resting on the hilt of the pistol at her hip, idly noticing Garrus and Grunt taking up unobtrusive positions nearby. They’d be able to react quickly if the woman tried anything, so Shepard let herself relax a little and tried to make her expression suitably friendly. 

It was kind of hard to do with the woman staring at her like she was a cut of prime steak. 

“ZEUS?” Shepard asked casually, leaning back on the bar and keeping her voice pitched low but not quiet—whispers attracted attention far better than speaking at a low but regular volume. 

The woman’s placid smile didn’t change, but something sharpened in her eyes like the finely honed point of a knife. Shepard got the impression that whatever the woman had previously thought of her, it had just undergone a massive—and negative—revision.

“It seems you have me at a disadvantage,” the woman replied at the same volume, still smiling. Nothing about her body language gave away that she was alarmed, or that anything at all suspicious was being said between them. It was only her eyes that betrayed her, ravenous and predatory like a hawk watching a mouse. “Might I know your name?” 

“Commander Shepard, SSV Normandy,” she introduced perfunctorily, getting the sense that this woman was one misstep away from going for her jugular despite the multitude of civilians present. That was a mess Shepard honestly _did not need_ right now. 

Shepard watched her eyes that time, and caught another subtle shift. The unnerving hunger was still there (and she still couldn’t classify it), but an almost imperceptible layer of tension evaporated from the air. Shepard hadn’t even noticed it, and had to grudgingly give credit where credit was due. 

“Ah, Commander,” the woman beamed, radiant and beautiful for all that her stare didn’t waver. Shepard didn’t even think the woman had blinked yet. “I heard you were dead,” this was said cheerfully and without malice, the sort of tone you’d use if someone had pulled a mildly amusing but juvenile prank on you without provocation. 

“The rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated,” Shepard drawled, honestly hoping Cerberus would hurry up and rescind the KIA status stuck to her name soon. This reaction was getting kind of old. 

“I knew you’d be interesting,” the woman admitted, leaning forward and smiling coyly. Her eyes still hadn’t changed. “I _like_ interesting.” That sounded fairly ominous. “But what would someone like you be doing looking for someone like me?” 

“What do you know about the Collectors?” Shepard pressed on, not expecting much but wanting to move the conversation in the right direction before they got sidetracked. She slid over a datapad containing what little information they had, and watched the woman take it with fingers tipped with delicately painted nails. They matched her lipstick. 

She skimmed the data with impressive speed, eyes flickering across the words and pages like a salarian. A tiny little furrow appeared between her brows, and her mouth pulled into a small pout. 

The woman slid the datapad back with unfocused eyes, lost in thought. The pout slowly slid away, replaced by an unfamiliar, hungry smile. Strangely, it was the realest expression Shepard had seen on her face so far. When her eyes snapped back into focus, they did so with pupils so black it was like looking at a shark. 

“You’re hunting these Collectors?” she asked rhetorically, still smiling that shark’s smile. “And you want _my_ help?” That part was asked slightly dubiously, as if she doubted Shepard knew just what exactly she was asking for. 

Honestly, Shepard doubted that too. 

“I need all the help I can get,” she admitted, frustrated with her lack of progress. She’d take just about anyone with any sort of legitimate skill at this point; she’d have preferred them to be at least slightly trustworthy, but trust could be built with time. Skills like those a two-hundred-year-old shapeshifter could bring to the table could _not_. “It’ll be dangerous,” she felt compelled to warn. “My employers—” she very tactfully did not mention Cerberus, “—are willing to compensate you a significant amount for you time, as well as offer their assistance in any personal endeavors you may have as thanks.” 

The woman considered Shepard for a long moment, and then smiled another placid, empty smile. She held out one perfectly manicured hand. “Alex,” she said pleasantly. Shepard shook her hand bemusedly. Her skin felt feverish. “It would be my _genuine_ pleasure to do business with you.”

 

* * *

 

Alex strolled along behind Commander Shepard and her entourage, taking deep breaths that were purely indulgent. She still smelled and tasted _fascinating_ , but considering the mission he’d just been hired for, it might be in poor taste to eat her. She seemed kind of important, after all, and a whole lot of people would notice if she suddenly went missing. 

Not that that would have stopped him, but these Collectors… they had promise. An entire race he knew nothing about? That _none_ of his victims over the years had ever heard of? He couldn’t wait to sink his metaphorical teeth into them and—not so metaphorically—rip them open for their secrets. 

“So what’s with the ZEUS thing?” the turian asked after a few minutes of relative silence. He’d introduced himself earlier as Garrus Vakarian—a name Alex was familiar with from his stint on Omega, even if he’d gone by a loftier title then. “It a nickname? A profession?”          

Alex smiled, amused, still wearing his blond seductress skin because if there was one thing he’d learned in his very long life, it was that people (aliens and humans alike) did not tend to react rationally to creatures swarming with tentacles within a stone’s throw of them. He’d wait to drop that particular bomb on them when they reached Shepard’s ship. 

“It was a title an enemy gave me years ago,” Alex replied easily enough. He’d resented the name, once, back before he realized that Blackwatch had only given him that particular designation because they _feared_ him. You didn’t name weak enemies after kings or gods, and especially not after both. “It’s mine, now. Why shouldn’t I use it?” 

“That sounds like a story,” Vakarian replied, mandibles twitching in intrigue. Alex had consumed enough turians to be able to read even their smallest micro-expressions. 

“Oh, it’s nothing terribly interesting,” Alex rebuffed. “The whole war took less than a month.” 

“Still,” Vakarian mused. “It sounds familiar.” 

“It should,” Shepard broke in, looking over her shoulder as they approached the spacedock. “Zeus was the king of the Greek Pantheon of gods, way back when.” She glanced back at the ship. “We’re here.” 

Alex let his eyes roam over the ship Shepard had led them to, running his tongue over his lip in the tick this particular body had managed to carry over in death. The Normandy was an impressive piece of engineering, even if this one was not the original. Despite Shepard’s suspiciously miraculous resurrection, there was hard evidence that the old Normandy had been obliterated by an unknown weapon of monstrous power. The fact that someone had gone through the trouble to both revive Shepard _and_ recreate her old ship almost exactly (at least outwardly) pointed towards an agenda a mite bit bigger than simply stopping the Collectors. 

It took a serious bankroll to do either one of those things, and the number of individuals or groups capable of funding _both simultaneously_ Alex could count on one hand.           

Alex was betting on Cerberus. Shepard had been careful not to name-drop her mysterious employer, but it wasn’t a difficult deduction to make. _Someone_ had pointed Shepard in Alex’s direction, and with enough information on him to let her single him out in a crowd at that. That was the sort of information gathering small-time bands like the Blue Suns couldn’t dream of doing.           

The Shadow Broker could have done it, Alex allowed. That was one oyster he’d yet to crack, despite having spent quite a bit of his copious free time hunting down leads. But Alex rather got the impression that the Broker would rather nuke him from high orbit than let him waltz his way onto a highly-secured starship piloted by a famous war hero. 

“We’ll have to set up some quarters for you,” Shepard was saying as they stepped through the airlock. “It might be a bit—” 

_“Warning. Foreign contaminants detected. Implementing quarantine procedures,”_ a synthesized female voice rang out in the room as both doors closed and locked and the air made an audible venting noise. 

Alex smiled in amusement even as all eyes went directly towards him. He wasn’t surprised they’d cottoned on so fast; he was the only new factor these people had introduced to the ship, and this was obviously not a warning they’d heard before. 

“Don’t worry,” Alex reassured them, still grinning, “I’m not contagious.” 

Not unless he wanted to be, which was something he wouldn’t be sharing with the class. 

“Alex,” Shepard began warningly, seeming to loom ominously without actually moving. That was an impressive skill, and one Alex himself used subconsciously when he wasn’t hiding what he was.

“Relax Shepard,” Alex couldn’t manage to banish the grin entirely, but did wrestle it down so he was hiding his teeth again. No matter what body he was wearing, his grins always did have too many teeth in them to be properly human. “I’ve been this way for a very long time, and it hasn’t killed me yet.” 

These people were going to seriously appreciate his irony when they finally clued in to what exactly they’d let on their ship. 

“EDI?” Shepard asked the ceiling, apparently intelligent enough not to take him at his word. Smart of her. 

_“Scanning,”_ the voice—EDI, apparently—replied calmly. Alex did a bit of shuffling around with his external biomass in the way he rarely bothered with, perfectly mimicking the outward genetic appearance of a human male in their early twenties. That he was still in a female body and that this would likely puzzle several of his new companions was just a bonus. _“My apologies, Shepard. I appear to have suffered a slight malfunction with my systems; I can detect no foreign contaminants in the compartment. Releasing quarantine.”_

Shepard’s suspicious frown grew, but she didn’t question him further. She was likely to wait until they were either somewhere with more privacy, or she’d developed a ‘rapport’ with him. That’s what Alex would do if he needed information from someone and couldn’t simply do it the quick and easy way. 

“Welcome aboard, Alex,” Shepard finally said, letting her suspicions drop for now. “Talk to EDI and get settled in somewhere; we’ll be docked a few more days to resupply before heading out, so you might want to take the chance to introduce yourself to the rest of the crew.” 

“Noted, Shepard.” 

Alex prowled past the little group in the airlock, primly balancing on his heels as an amused grin tried to pull at his face. He certainly couldn’t fault his taste in interesting people. And this one promised to be even more entertaining than consuming her would have been! 

He couldn’t fucking _wait_.

 

* * *

 

Shepard couldn’t say she was _surprised_ that her newest crewmember was already causing problems before they’d even entered the ship proper, but she was resigned to it all the same. She just seemed to attract the type of person that refused to conform to neat little boxes; in that way, at least, Alex was going to fit right in. 

She snorted to herself as she flicked through the datapad, strolling aimlessly down a hallway on the Engineering Deck. She did her best thinking while in motion; sitting patiently in chairs had never been her strong suit, much to the despair of her superiors back in the academy. Plus this way she got to make the rounds and talk to her crew; she liked to know who she was working with, and to make sure _they_ knew _her_. There was nothing worse than going out on the field with someone she’d never so much as exchanged three words with—and no easier way to die a messy death. 

“Oy, Commander?” a male voice hissed from up ahead. 

Shepard looked up in mild surprise, not having expected to be flagged down. Donnelly was peering around suspiciously, squinting around corners and at closed doors as if he were in an overdone spy vid.

“Donnelly? Is something wrong?” Shepard felt a headache coming on. One week. One week without some kind of disaster happening. Was that too much to ask?

“That new girl,” he began without preamble, still hissing his voice as if afraid of being overheard. “The sexy blond,” Donnelly qualified, as if there had been any other ‘new girls’ allowed on the ship recently, “I think she might be an alien.” 

Shepard sighed under her breath and put away her datapad. Obviously she was going to have to nip this in the bud; she knew Cerberus had some… _ideas_ about aliens, but she was trying to stomp out any sort of xenophobia in her crew where she found it. 

“What makes you say that?” she asked instead of immediately dressing him down for being speciest. It wouldn’t do to jump to conclusions. Alex very much _was_ an alien of some kind, but one that passed very well as human. She was kind of curious what had given them away. 

“She went into the cargo hold, see?” Here Donnelly pointed, as if Shepard didn’t know where the cargo hold was on her own ship. She obligingly followed his finger and looked at the closed door. “But she _never came out_.” 

“Are you trying to imply that they’re an alien because they haven’t left their room?” Shepard replied, deadpan. Her headache reappeared with a vengeance. 

“You don’t get it, Commander!” Donnelly hissed back, still talking under his breath. Shepard herself had made no such effort to modulate her volume. “She went in, but _someone else came back out!_ ”           

Shepard stood up a little straighter. _There it is_. Shapeshifting. It was nice to have that confirmed, but now she had a crewmember wandering around the ship wearing a completely different face. It had been difficult enough to pick them out of a crowd initially; how much harder would it be now that they could actively hide from her if they wanted to? 

Shepard knew a lot of her crewmembers, but she hadn’t memorized the faces of every single person who worked on her ship. That would be an undertaking she simply did not have time for. 

“What did they look like?” Shepard asked curiously. She doubted they were wearing the same face after all this time, but perhaps they preferred certain forms? It would behoove her to familiarize herself with the bodies her new crewmate liked to wear so she wouldn’t be unpleasantly surprised on a mission. 

“Scary,” Donnelly replied promptly—and unhelpfully. “Tall. Big. _Male_. Man looked right at me and bared his teeth. It weren’t no smile I’d ever want aimed at me again, no sir!” 

That was… mildly disturbing. Not that Shepard was one to _judge_ , exactly, but it was quite a jump to go from ‘changing faces’ to ‘changing _sexes_.’ Somehow it hadn’t occurred to her that her new crewmate might not actually be the alien-equivalent of female. ‘Alex’ was such a neutral name that it could have gone either way, and they _acted_ like a woman at least. None of her male crewmembers—hell, none of her male acquaintances at all—could have pulled off a ruse like that so flawlessly. Shepard herself doubted she could pass as a man even if she had a perfect disguise; she just wouldn’t be able to hide the tiny mannerisms and body language that would give her away to anyone sufficiently observant. 

She hadn’t seen anything at all strange about Alex on the entire walk back to the ship. They walked like a woman, moved like a woman, shifted their weight like a woman (center of gravity was a bitch to disguise, she knew), hell they even _flirted_ like a woman. 

“But smiles are a sign of camaraderie,” an unfamiliar tenor voice purred from directly behind her. “We’re comrades, you and I. Aren’t we?” 

Shepard did not let herself react. She did not tense her muscles, did not raise her hackles, and did not pull her sidearm. 

Well, all right, so she did two of those things, but she controlled the involuntary reaction quickly enough that she doubted anyone would have noticed. Donnelly certainly hadn’t, even if the way he squeaked and paled at the sight of whoever was at her back was mildly amusing. And worrying. 

Shepard turned. 

A man stood behind her, tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in clothing several centuries out of style. There was a hood pulled up over his head, but that did little to hide his face at such close quarters. 

She rather wished it was hiding him better. 

It was not a hideous face, or horribly disfigured. It was actually rather handsome: classical lines with high cheekbones and a jawline that could have cut glass. He was sickly pale, the sort of ghastly countenance you only ever saw on extraordinarily ill people, with dark shadows under his eyes that only highlighted the sheer _inhumanity_ of them. 

They were like shards of ice, glacier-cold and a blue so pale they were almost silver. His pupils were pinpricks, fever-bright and wild in a way that spoke of feral varrens and rabid dogs. Hunger was scrawled over his entire face, pulling his expression away from the congenital greeting he probably wanted it to be and twisting it into something that was going to haunt her nightmares for weeks. 

She would not have been surprised if he pulled a fork out of his back pocket and proceeded to feast on her internal organs. 

The grin pulling at his lips was probably the least human thing about him, and he was staring at her as if he’d like to break her open and eat her alive. It was several shades too wide to be human, full of teeth just a little too sharp to be natural. All in all, he looked extraordinarily like a monster _almost_ managing to pretend to be human, but falling just short enough that the fact that he’d tried _at all_ was made even _worse_. She’d almost have rathered him just appear before her as some kind of massive mutated alien horror. At least then she’d know what she was really dealing with. 

“Alex,” she surmised, trying very hard not to let on how unnerved she was. It wasn’t just his whole… _other-ness_. It was also the way he’d snuck up on her like that, gotten within her guard without so much as a whisper of sound. Donnelly hadn’t even _reacted_ to him until he’d spoken, which meant he’d somehow—as a man that had to be several inches over six feet tall—gone entirely unnoticed until he deliberately made his presence known. 

That was not the sort of skill she’d particularly like to attribute to a creature that looked like it would very much enjoy finding out what color her blood was. 

“In the flesh,” he replied, amusement trembling under his words. His already unnaturally wide grin widened further. His teeth were very white. 

Shepard didn’t entirely understand. He’d been so normal-looking, earlier. The woman-shape had been almost flawless. It had certainly been vastly more human than this new shape, so why had he changed it? He obviously _could_ pass as human if he wanted to, but he just… wasn’t trying very hard? Was it a sign of trust? A dare? A challenge? 

“Have you settled in all right?” Shepard barreled on, not letting him put her off her balance. She would treat this as if it was perfectly normal for your presumably-female crewmember to parade around as an unnecessarily unnerving male human. The best way to win this sort of game was to simply not play along at all. 

Alex seemed to… pull back. The sharp, jagged edges of his expression smoothed out into something vastly more natural looking, and the inconsistencies in his body she hadn’t even consciously noticed seemed to settle into more normal configurations. She hadn’t even registered the way his jacket was arrayed into a series of fractals and almost biological curves and angles, until it suddenly wasn’t.

Within the span of an eyeblink, Alex had gone from a mildly-horrifying cannibalistic monster-creature and turned into a tall, sickly human man with a very grumpy resting-face. 

“Yeah, it’s fine,” he replied, the very picture of nonchalance. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and shrugged his shoulders, the movement slightly stilted but otherwise perfectly normal. “I’ve set up in the old cargo bay,” he gestured a bit jerkily over his shoulder with a thumb. “Hope you don’t mind.” 

Shepard kept a placid, no-nonsense expression on her face. She carefully set aside the thought that Alex had been deliberately creepy earlier when he was perfectly capable of appearing entirely normal. She’d unpack it later, when she wasn’t one misstep from shooting her new crewmember in the face because he made her instincts start screaming hysterically. She hadn’t felt so unsafe since she’d been stranded alone against a thresher maw surrounded by dead teammates. 

“That’s not a problem,” she assured him. Shepard paused. “Sorry if this sounds rude, but, do you prefer male or female pronouns?” 

Alex blinked. “Male’s fine,” he finally replied, seeming a little bewildered but willing to play along. “I don’t really care, but this is the shape I was born in and it’s the one I’m most familiar with. You’ll see me in it a lot.” 

Shepard had rather hoped that wasn’t the case, but she certainly wasn’t going to say that to his _face_. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She quickly changed the subject, not wanting to loiter too long on something that might end up being a tripwire. “Have you met the rest of the crew yet? I see you’ve at least seen Donnelly; he works here in Engineering with Daniels. I’m not sure you’ve met her.” 

Alex’s lip tilted up in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “We’ve met.” 

That sounded suitably ominous. Shepard figured nothing she did or said here was going to make her any less unnerved, and made a strategic exit.

“I should go.”       

Alex grinned then, outwardly amused. “See you around, Shepard.”

She was not retreating. It was a sound, tactical decision that necessitated walking quickly in the opposite direction.

“So," Alex's voice purred throatily, like the growling hum of a massive beast. "You thought I was sexy.”

Donnelly squeaked in protest. Shepard began walking faster.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The cargo bay wasn’t the _worst_ place Alex had ever bunked in. That dubious honor went to the various little hideouts he had established around New York Zero, usually in the hollowed-out remnants of old Hives. There was a certain calmness to burrowing in with the leftover flesh and wetwork of the Infected. A sort of… connection that he wouldn’t admit to another living soul. 

Of course, that connection hadn’t stopped him from systematically hunting down and burning out any trace of Redlight he could sense. Greene and her deranged ‘children’ had been the single largest threat to him once he’d effectively neutered Blackwatch, and thus could not be suffered to live. 

In comparison, the cargo bay on the Normandy was practically paradise. 

It had come partially furnished, with a chair and a few desks, and a bit of tweaking with the nearby terminals displayed the security feeds from the rest of the ship. And if Alex sometimes eyed the dark, damp corners near the garbage disposal wistfully, imagining what it might look like covered in the fleshy webs of the Infection, well. 

That was his own business. 

It had only taken him a single day to figure out the rest of the crew was… _anxious_ , about his presence onboard. Turning his bunk into a floating space hive was probably going to be counterproductive towards establishing some small measure of trust between them. More’s the pity. 

He thought it was rather interesting how quickly the humans on board had pegged him as some sort of monster. He hadn’t even done anything terribly blatant or unnatural yet, and still more than once he’d caught a crewmember doing an about-face the second they clapped eyes on him and quickly leaving the room. 

Alex considered Shepard’s half-hearted suggestion to go around and ‘meet the crew.’ They would probably be vastly more comfortable if he just stayed in the cargo bay, out of sight if not out of mind. Humans, he’d learned, were far more sensitive to his _otherness_ than aliens were. Something about him spoke to their most primal instincts, the ones that hissed about teeth in the shadows and eyes in the dark. 

He could walk through the Citadel, through crowds of turians and krogans and asari, and have no one bat an eye. He could do the same through a group of humans and was guaranteed to have _at least_ three separate people turn to keep him in their line of sight, consciously or not. Wearing disguises helped. 

When he wore the body of one of his victims, he did more than just pull on their face like a strange hat. He _became_ them. Their body language, their mannerisms, their facial expressions. Those were all things that were slightly… lacking on his base form. Oh he could fake emotion well enough these days if he really tried, but it was just so much _easier_ when he could use the template of someone who’d actually _been_ human at one point.

Alex, as opposed to most of his forms, looked at humans and saw _prey_. He looked at a person and thought about the best way to rip them open, the quickest way to crack open their ribcage and pull out their offal. That translated rather transparently to his face, and even the densest human being could take one look at him and know he did not have their best interest at heart. 

Pandering to their delicate sensibilities was simply not worth the effort, most days. Let them fear him. Let them look upon him and know they had a predator hunting them. 

Alex smiled, baring his teeth in the absolute darkness of his new home, and considered who he should visit first.

 

* * *

 

Joker liked to think he was a pretty chill guy, all things considered. Growing up like he had, where the slightest accidental nudge could break bones, he’d had to develop a _don’t stress the small stuff_ mentality pretty damn fast. If he’d spent his time bemoaning his lot in life, terrified to leave his bed in case he snapped his fool neck by turning his head too damn fast, he would never have made it to the Alliance, to Shepard, to _space_. 

Fuck, if he’d let the Vrolik’s control his life, he’d probably have never gotten out of his fucking _nursery_. 

Things were a bit better now that Cerberus was footing their bill, at least. The shady agency had a not-inconsiderable interest in keeping Shepard rooted firmly on the side of evil, so had forked over enough creds to get Joker some high-quality braces to shuffle around in. The actual _treatment_ he’d need if he wanted to live the rest of his life with bones stronger than twigs was more expensive than four Normandys put together, so he wasn’t getting his hopes up there.

But the braces were nice. No more wondering if today was the day he’d crack his shin open on a sharp corner on the way to and from the cockpit! The freedom to walk around with semi-confidence that he might not actually cripple himself in agony by taking a few steps was pretty fucking liberating. 

So Joker was in a very chill mood, even with a potentially-homicidal AI plugged right into his fucking _ship_ , fucking _Cerberus_ , and wasn’t going to let anything ruin this for him. Not Collectors, not Reapers, and certainly not his own fucking body. 

“Hello.” 

Joker _did not_ squeal like a little girl, absolutely not. He also flinched spastically and heard his neck give a warning crack at the fast movement, but _thank all the gods_ nothing actually broke. That would have seriously put a damper on his chill. Also would have likely wound up with the Normandy ramming right into the nearest Mass Relay, since EDE wasn’t allowed to take control and no one else on the ship could actually steer worth a damn. 

“ _Shit_ , dude,” Joker hissed, carefully untensing his muscles to give his poor neck a break. “Wear a damn _bell_ or something, seriously—” Joker turned his chair to see who had been fucking stupid enough to sneak up on the pilot with glass bones only for his breath to catch in his throat. 

That was not a person staring back at him.

Oh, it _looked_ like one, Joker would give it that. It was doing a damn good job at pretending, too, but Joker had been around the galaxy enough to learn the difference between a tamed varren and one that would take your hand off if you tried to pet it. The… being staring at him from way too fucking close would probably go right for his vulnerable soft parts the second he turned his back on it. 

Joker knew who this was supposed to be, he wasn’t a total idiot. Shepard had picked it up off the Citadel on the recommendation of her new Cerberus overlords—and that _should have been a warning sign, Jane!_ —but he was _pretty fucking sure_ this thing had been a chick when she brought it onboard. 

“Weren’t you a girl like an hour ago?” Joker blurted, morbidly fascinated in the way humans were fascinated with very large apex predators locked behind easily-breakable glass. 

It curled its lip in an imitation of a smile, baring its teeth at him. “I’m very flexible,” it fucking _purred_ at him. _No_. Joker was not going to touch that with a ten-foot _pole_. He was chill, not _suicidal_. “Alex Mercer,” it went on to introduce itself, offering a hand. 

Joker stared at the hand. Most of the time when people met him, they tried to shake his hand and wound up breaking it. He’d become very leery of letting people he didn’t know or trust touch him, and also become resigned to having his hand broken anytime he met someone new. Something, though, something in his lizard hindbrain was shrieking klaxon warnings at him that if he took this thing’s hand right now, he wouldn’t just break a few bones. 

He’d _lose the fucking hand_. 

“How gentle are you?” Joker asked bluntly, eyeing the outstretched hand skeptically. “Because I’ve got literal glass bones, dude, and I kind of need my hands to steer.” 

Something slid over its eyes like oil, an expression so totally alien that Joker didn’t even try to apply human emotion to it. 

“Not very,” it admitted easily, pulling the hand back without pressing the issue. Point for it, then, since Joker’d had C.O.s who’d pushed and then felt _so bad_ that they’d broken his fucking bones Jeff, they didn’t _mean to_. “I’ve heard of this,” it told him in the tones of someone discussing the weather on Virmire. “How many bones have you broken?” 

Joker could only laugh, because if he didn’t laugh he’d probably start screaming profanity at it because _who asks people that_ with that sort of fascinated, hungry tone? Psychopaths, that’s who. Shepard had brought a fucking psychopath onboard his ship, one that was looking at him like he was debating where to hide his fucking corpse after he _violently murders him_. 

“Too many, dude,” was all Joker could really say. It wasn’t like he’d kept count. “But let’s keep any curiosity _internal_ , all right? I really need to be in one piece to fly this baby,” he patted the nearest console proudly. He really did love this ship, even if it wasn’t the one he’d originally flown for the Commander. 

It tilted its head at him. Joker forcefully shoved down the shiver that wanted to crawl up his fragile spine. Its body language was just askew from the human norm enough that it was making his nerves rattle. And he’d never had to worry about _those_ breaking on him before. One thing Joker was not was a coward. 

“You’re nervous,” it announced, blandly and without inflection, as if this fact were not anything to really get worked up about. Expected, even. “But not afraid. Why?” 

Joker bit back the first six responses to that, and then swallowed the next three. His lizard hindbrain was still screaming at him, and he didn’t need a lifetime of watching every corner and protruding wall for danger to tell him that he was treading on thin fucking ice. 

But, honestly? “Dude, walking down the hall inspires more terror in me than you do.” Joker had lived in constant, sick terror his whole life. One mildly unsettling being sneaking up on him on his own ship? There was hardly a comparison, no matter what his hindbrain thought about it. “No offense, I’m sure you’re very frightening,” Joker back-peddled, not wanting to offend it in case it prided itself on its first impressions. 

It considered him for a long moment, eyes sharpening into focus in a way that made it clear that it had only been half paying attention to him before now. Joker wished he knew what he’d said that inspired that kind of attention so he could go back in time and stop himself from saying it.

There was a sort of… _finality_ to the way it nodded, gravely and blank-faced. “I would like a blood sample at your earliest convenience,” it said out of fucking nowhere. 

Joker had had enough tests done on him and visited enough med-centers to barely bat an eye at the prospect of a blood draw, but— “Okaaaay… Why?” he asked, baffled. He didn’t think this thing was a doctor, and if it was it _seriously_ needed to work on its bedside manner. 

The look it gave him made his blood turn to fucking ice. It was ravenous, the sort of thing you’d expect to see on a starving dog, salivating from a gaping maw. “Blood is replenishable,” was all it said in reply, as if that was a perfectly normal response. It also made Joker desperate to ask _as opposed to what_ , but he had a very good feeling that he didn’t want to know. 

“Yeaaaah, take that up with Chakwas,” Joker settled on saying. He wasn’t going to voluntarily give this thing his blood (what if it could curse him or hijack his body somehow?) but if it got it from the actual doctor on the ship, well. Chakwas knew what she was doing. 

It tilted its head in his direction, a sort of conciliatory _you’ve got me there_ gesture. Some of the hungry menace it was wearing pulled back, its body language smoothing out into something that let his hackles lower a shade. “The Commander instructed me to introduce myself to the crew,” it said, only just now getting around to why it was fucking bothering him in the first place. 

“Well damn,” Joker couldn’t help but say sarcastically, “nice to meet you, man!” 

It smiled back at him. Joker very carefully not did not flinch away like he wanted to. It didn’t… _feel_ like a threat, for all that it looked like one. Maybe it was just… really bad at smiling? “Nice to meet you, as well,” it replied politely, sounding genuine and only a little like it sort of wanted to rip him into small pieces and eat them. 

“You should totally go see Garrus next, he’s pretty chill—” also Garrus had been on the team that collected it so he would be way less likely to freak out than anyone else on board, “—you can usually find him in the weapon battery, calibrating shit.” 

“I will do so,” it told him, as if Joker had just given it great advice instead of blatantly trying to pawn it off on someone else. “Until we meet again,” it said in farewell, before it turned on its heel and _nope_ , that was _not_ how humans walked and spines did _not_ let you twist like that without breaking things. 

Joker would know.

 _Sheesh_ , he grimaced to himself as he spun his chair back around to face the console. _Shepard sure knows how to pick ‘em._

**Author's Note:**

> This is the rewrite of my 'completed' story over on fanfiction.net, "Consuming Direct Control." I was looking back over it a few weeks ago and just... cringed. My writing style has changed so much since I posted it that it was almost painful to look at. So I figured I'd try and rewrite it.
> 
> It'll only be sideways comparable, probably, in that it follows the same plot lines and has the same characters. Everything else is likely to be different, especially the way I've characterized Alex and Shepard. It has been a _long_ time since I've played Mass Effect 2, so I'm relying almost entirely on the wiki and my old story to know what happened when. Besides that, though, this is mostly a character study and a chance for me to write Alex as the creepy semi-immortal cannibal beast he truly is inside.
> 
> Beware of my typical slow updates.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Among the ruins](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17060540) by [Yoruhime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yoruhime/pseuds/Yoruhime)




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